I'd rather be having a quiet drink... and can be followed on Twitter @alcothusiast; and friended on Untappd (handle: "neilcake" - all welcome).

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

The Distinct Beers Challenge; It's Not a Graph, it's a Competition

It’s some months now
since I first mentioned a phone app called Untappd
on these pages. It was in my StockportPub Crawlpost, I believe. I have to admit not being so bothered about
it at first, but I kept up the trying of different beers and subsequent logging
anyway, and it has since taken on a life
of its own…

It started with
trying to buy a distinct beer – as
in, distinct from all the others I’d already logged – every time I bought a
pint. That went nicely in hand with the increasing frequency of trips to The Magnet. I didn’t let it rule my
life however. Sure, I’d extract myself from conversation for a couple of
minutes every time while I logged and rated, then I’d announce proudly whether
or not I’d received a badge to justify my efforts, but I didn’t let it stop me
picking up my usual four cans of Holsten Pils on a Friday evening or just
buying a pint I was familiar with because I didn’t want to think about it… at first…

It wasn’t a
competition… exactly – though if it were, I would have been winning. I had a
very short start on all my friends who chose to take part, and I took it
slightly more serious from the beginning, but I was still proud to be way ahead in terms of distinct beers and badges earned.At the beginning of November, roughly 8 months after
the start, I’d racked up 163 distinct beers and 66 badges – without trying
particularly hard, remember.

It was at this point
that Phil texted me to inform me of his intention to have exceeded my distinct
beers tally by the same time next year – so that would be November 12 2015. And
then it became a competition.

Phil was only on 38
beers at the time and, while I accept that he probably wasn’t trying very hard at
all up to that point, I figured he would have to up his game somewhat to
achieve his goal – not least because my tally was sure to continue to grow over
the following 12 months – probably even more deliberately this time. I came to
realise just how many drinks opportunities had
been wasted on beers I’d already logged – the aforementioned 4 cans of
Holsten, the week spent in Spain where it made sense to buy multipacks of beer
and in fact where the scope for sourcing distinct beers was limited…

Nevertheless, up to
this point I knew I had the advantage of generally being more widely travelled
(Florida and Berlin had both figured in my travel itinerary since
my first check-in – whereas Phil had only taken his partner on holiday once in
the last 8 years – to Bruges, sure enough but, still…), and therefore being
exposed to the possibility of a wider variety of beers – and also that massive
start. I also had a few disadvantages though.

First, I’d been
noticing my belly growing over the preceding few months and I’d thought that
maybe I’d cut back on the beer for a bit. Second, we’d be moving house soon
and, unless I found a convenient pub that was The Magnet’s equal, regularly
sourcing distinct beers might not be so easy.

Thirdly, Phil suggested
that , as my distinct beers total grew, surely it would become more difficult
to find new beers. Pablo rightly pointed out that it seems new breweries are
opening all the time, so there’s always new beer… which is true except that a
lot of the places you end up going for drinks only serve the same 3 or 4 beers,
and you can’t always steer your companions in the direction of somewhere with a
wider variety. Not to mention that it’s difficult to remember all the beers
you’ve tried already, meaning there’s always the possibility of accidentally
getting one you’ve already had.

Finally, what I
couldn’t tell anyone at first, but what I can write now, knowing I won’t be
posting this for a few months, is that Mrs Cake had become pregnant. Now, that didn’t
mean I was going to stop drinking, but it did mean I wouldn’t be drinking so
often. Mrs Cake had become a regular beer-trying companion, and if she’s not
allowed to drink at all, then we’re not going to be popping out to the pub very
much. Phil could actually say the same thing about Katie (who was actually one
month ahead of us in pregnancy terms), but I don’t think Katie was as much a
drinking companion as Mrs Cake was.

Pretty much as soon
as the gauntlet had been cast, Phil started racking up distinct beers in
earnest – but worse, he was ordering halves.
Then everyone else wanted in, and my graph showing our progression grew from
two people to five.

Pablo started on 105
distinct beers, leaving 58 to catch up; Jon started on 7, and Dave on 68.

For my part, I was
determined not to go nuts, but I did start going out of my way to buy something
different for home drinking each time. It isn’t as easy as you might think –
the selection at Tesco for example is fairly uninspiring and a lot of it
consists of the kinds of beer I’m not particularly interested in drinking –
golden ales and low strength bitters. Even when I went into Carrington’s I
wasn’t exactly bowled over by options – everything looked familiar. I didn’t
really want to get my phone out and check whether I already had certain beers
logged, but before long that’s what I was having to do – it was better than the
feeling of waste that would accompany finding I was duplicating my work later
on. There were occasions when I felt sure I was getting something distinct,
only to be furious at wasting money on something I’d already had when I
returned from the bar and tried logging it.

The competition
element also started to reveal other difficulties - I couldn’t send someone
else to the bar for me if I want a distinct
beer because they wouldn’t know what I’d had already (except in those pubs
that have big boards up showing what they’ve got on, or menus). I could’t even
suggest they get the most obscure one since there’s no more chance of me not
having had that already than anything else – which meant I had to either go for
myself every time, or go with them, and in either case explain what was going on.

It wasn’t long
before the explaining got boring. People would ask how come we didn’t start
from zero (wouldn’t be fair – though it doesn’t mean I won’t tally that up also
– and that wasn’t the challenge), what are the rules (there really aren’t any),
can’t you cheat – say by logging beers you’ve had in the past, or haven’t
actually had (yes, but you’d only be cheating yourself, and winning wouldn’t be
so satisfying).

It was also starting
to get expensive. I was buying £6 IPAs before I knew it, and pretending I could
afford it. To be fair, I would probably have done that anyway but I wouldn’t
have gone back immediately and bought another pint for about the same price, as
I was doing. Then I was buying cans of
beer the size of coke cans (330ml) for £4.50, and thanking them for it. Why don’t I just let the whole beer industry
bum me? Jesus.

Towards the end of
this whole debacle, there was the Indy Man Beer Con, where you hand over your
hard earned cash for tokens, each representing one pound. Then you buy thirds of beer for various numbers of
tokens. You’re not thinking at the time, but when you spend four tokens on a
third of beer, that would make a pint twelve
pounds. It then seems cheap that there are ones you can get for two and a
half tokens, but even then it’s £7.50 a pint.

As I said before,
Phil was buying halves deliberately. I didn’t really think this was on, but
there aren’t really any rules. If people do things like that you could tut at
them or sneer at them, and that might make them feel bad. For my part, I can’t
say I’m completely blameless as, I have certain friends who, when we go to each
other’s place for dinner, we bring different beers, and then we’ll share them
so we both get to try them all. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s similar to Phil’s
trick. The thing is, he started doing that because he wanted to win whereas
I’ve been sharing fancy beers with visitors since well before the competition
began.

My personal rules
were as follows:

Halves are not acceptable unless you’re sharing a fancy beer with a
friend.

Thirds are only acceptable at the IMBC – you could rationalise this
by saying that you’re paying for at least two pints even though you’re
only getting a third, so it’s only fair.

It is not acceptable to log a beer that you’ve only had a taste of.

One accidental but I
suppose no less underhand manner in which I gained an advantage was in my beer
purchases for Clare from Feast andGlory’s NYE party. I’d asked Phil if he was intending to bring distinct
beers, and he said no, since that would mean riding roughshod over the party
spirit and having to keep all his beers to himself. I agreed, and intended to
just get 6 or 8 bottles of a lager I particularly liked. When it came to buying
though, Mrs Cake took it upon herself to do it while I was at band practice.
She texted to ask what I wanted, and I replied along the agreed line. Instead
of that though, she just decided to buy me 6 different beers that took her
fancy – and she happened to buy 6 I’d never had before. Phil spotted this
within about 5 minutes of arriving at the party. Oh well; what Mrs Cake’s done
can’t be undone.

There were occasions
when I had to buy distinctly average beers just because I hadn’t logged them
already – despite drinking my fair share of them in a previous life – Stella,
Foster’s, Guinness (Guinness is ok, but I never buy it), Carling – just all
them beers you consider to be piss, and even really dodgy stuff like Lynx.

On one occasion I
tried a beer called Einstok while on
a works Christmas do. It had a nice, understated label, but I felt the beer
itself was distinctly average. I noted that it was from Iceland (the country,
not the frozen food store) and I just started thinking:

Do we really need to be importing distinctly
average beer from Iceland?

Nothing against Iceland
or anything, but how far is this going to go? Have we not got enough beer? We
have, haven’t we? Let’s find out.

So after a few
months it became a bit of a slog. After all, it is a marathon rather than a
sprint, and ultimately we would just have to see who could be the most
consistent overall. Phil’s challenge had pretty much fallen away by March, but Pablo
was racking up beers with gusto, and while it didn’t seem enough to make up
significant ground on my tally at first, it wouldn’t stay that way.

The months continued
to pass though and my finances started to wane for a variety of reasons, so my lead
began to wane. Pablo was rapidly
approaching with nothing to stop him attending various festivals (beer and
other), meet the brewer events, and just generally going to the pub with
alarming regularity. If I was going to be the winner in November, I’d need to
step up my game.

Manerba beers

The missus and I
only managed one holiday in the course of the year, and that was to Italy – not
a place that is renowned for its variety of beer, despite providing quality
products like Peroni and Moretti. Luckily, it turned out there was a
microbrewery near where we were staying, called Manerba. I was able to call
there and pick up one of each variety of their beers, and drink them throughout
the week. That made nine, so that wasn’t too bad.

My first real pub
crawl opportunity came at the end of May, in Stockport. I think I must have
been out of practice at drinking multiple beers though, as looking back the
night, I didn’t log half of the ones I got to try, and there’s no way of
figuring out what they were now. I could complain about that, but you’ve got to
take responsibility. Anyone can say, “yeah, but if I’d logged them all…” You’re
supposed to log them all.

A week or so later I
called into Urmston’s The Prairie Schooneron my way home, figuring I’d
make a newly concerted effort. I’d spent much of my idle time that day perusing
the bottle stock list on their website and comparing it with my Untappd log to
determine which ones I’d tried before and which I’d actually like to spend my
money on. It turned out that, of the British beers that I concentrated my
efforts on, only a few were ones I’d logged previously, and there was an
encouraging number that I’d call appealing – in particular some fairly high
strength IPAs.

I’d made a note on
my phone and spent a few minutes picking out the ones I could remember and
scanning the shelves for others, before deciding to stop at 10. I’d already
told Mrs Cake that I wasn’t wanting to spend more than £30 and would be hoping
to come in easily under that target. £30 is a lot to be spending on beer to
take home – you can get a decent single malt for that. I’d taken £30 out of the cash machine to
supplement the £7 I had on me in advance of meeting Mrs Cake in the Steamhouse
for a beer, and it turned out to be a good thing that Mrs Cake paid for that
beer… because my Schooner purchases came to £36. When I posted about my
purchases online, the consensus was that that was quite reasonable. Yeah,
maybe, but I could have gotten 38 cans of Holsten Pils for the same price.

When I came to
trying the beers, it was disheartening to find out how average I found most of
them – not bad by a long way, just not not worthy in my opinion of an average
of £3.60. That’s not the Prairie Schooner’s fault but, even with a number of
products falling into a 3 for £10 offer,
you can see why it’s hard for small breweries. If you need 24 bottles or cans
for something, you’re going to go to Tesco aren’t you, and get a crate of
something that’s hopefully half decent for like, £15? You just can’t afford to
buy 24 craft ales.

I’d posted to all
the other contestants some time previously, somewhat frivolously, that the beer
industry would no doubt thank us all for our involvement in the challenge but,
I’m not sure they will, will they? All we’re doing is trying something
different every time, and that just doesn’t help the producer – they need
repeat business (as I learned one time when I took Mrs Cake to a B&B in
Robin Hoods Bay and over breakfast, the proprietor told us that one time visits
weren’t much use to him – like it was a given –certainly more than a subtle
hint – that we would be back. We never were), and the only time any of us is
giving repeat business is if a brewery produces a number of varieties. A lot do,
but once we’ve tried them all, will we buy any again?

There aren’t many
breweries I’ve actually become a fan of through this and, I’m sorry to say,
there have actually been times when I’ve chosen not to buy any beer at all because
I couldn’t find anything I haven’t tried already or that I liked enough to buy
again. Though when I do buy beer, I am spending significantly more than I did
in the past. I’m just maybe buying significantly less – you know; three bottles
instead of 8 cans. From time to time.

We ploughed on, some
of us relentlessly, others (like Jon) saw the pace he would be expected to keep
and just declared they’d “found their brand” and stopped. He didn’t log a
single beer in the final 7 months. Phil said he’d be right up there if all the
beers he’d had were distinct, which I pointed out was the most redundant
statement ever made. We’d all had to drink beer that we’d tried previously. The
competition wasn’t about drinking the most beer, but the most different beers. And again, you can
apply that logic to anything: if we’d scored more goals, we’d have won the
match. Yeh, but you didn’t.

As the competition
wore on Pablo showed no signs of slowing, while I had to [almost] quit for 6
weeks while I was on driving alert for getting Mrs Cake to the hospital. There
were also a lot fewer festivals and trips to the pub for me, but that’s not the
point is it? The challenge is the challenge and no excuses will be accepted. If
Pablo was to win it would have been well deserved. He applied himself and took
advantage of his competitors’ weaknesses, but in general, he’s also way more
interested in beer than anyone else is and it would only be fair for that to be
rewarded.

With around a month
to go, he went into the lead for the first time, but only for a few days, as I
started racking them up again following the birth of my little girl and the
advent of three weeks of paternity leave. It was going to be an exciting run in,
especially when even Pablo had started complaining that he was running out of
beers he hadn’t tried – and not just in the supermarkets; in fancy beer shops,
too. He’s had to resort to buying German beers, a genre he doesn’t actually
have any kind of liking for.

Blowout

Time moves quicker
as you get older and, before we knew it, the culmination of the year long
challenge was approaching. We arranged a pub crawl for the weekend before the
Thursday that would bring our competition to an end.

The idea was to do
the Piccadilly Mile, a procession of breweries spanning the Ardwick and
Piccadilly areas that had begun to open their doors to visitors on Saturday
afternoons. The reality is that they don’t all open at once, so you have to
check in advance. On the weekend we’d chosen only Cloudwater and Alphabetwere to be open, so we had to find other ways of upping our beer count. Pablo
created a route, and sent us all a map. It looked quite a slog on paper,
potentially covering 2.2 miles, but sometimes thems the lengths you have to go
to to reach a variety of pubs you’ve never been in before.

We knew the title
wasn’t really up for grabs on this excursion, since all remaining active
participants were present and drinking at roughly the same speed. I was
determined not to lose any ground though, and actually clocked up 10 distinct
beers that day – as well as two more that I had logged previously, and the
possibility that I had some I couldn’t remember drinking later on.

At The Star &
Garter, on our way back into town, I chose a Boddington’s from their limited
selection in the first instance, hoping I hadn’t logged it yet. I had, and then
Dave found they were selling an obscure looking can called Primus. He got that and, to ensure I didn’t lose any ground, I
chugged my Boddies a bit quicker than everyone else, and went back for a Primus
– carrying the remainder out with me in my jacket pocket when everyone else
finished before I had.

There’s never a bin
around when you need one is there? I only mention it because later, when I
finished the can, there was nowhere for me to dispose of it, so I crushed it up
a bit and put it back in my inside pocket. Much later I remember walking
through a pub and kicking a can along the floor. I remember being confused, and
not realising that it must have fallen out of my pocket. I was probably in a
right state by then.

You probably want to
know a bit more about the breweries but, as you know, this is a half assed blog
at best, and I generally don’t find talking about beer all that interesting. I
will say though, Cloudwater had some sort of launch event on, and they were
very welcoming and busy, and had five or six examples of their beer available
for very reasonable prices. I tried the IPA and DIPA, and they were both
excellent.

We didn’t stay long
because we wanted to get to Alphabet before they closed. We were there early
enough, but not early enough to stop them closing up early. It seems no one
else had shown up all day, so they figured they could get home early.

My beer roll call
for the day (with scores) is as follows, Queen of the Night Pale Ale (2.5),
Goose Island IPA (unscored because I’d had it before), Cloudwater IPA Summer
2015 (4.5), Cloudwater DIPA (4.5), Boddington’s Bitter (1 – scored in spite of
having it before), Primus (2), Heavy Industry Left Field (3), Hydes Provenance
Munchen (2), Northern Monk Peated Soul (3.5), Blindfold Cider (1.25 – I don’t
remember having cider, it might have been an accident. It is probably also an
accident that I scored it a quarter point – I never do that as a rule), Winning
Post Ankle Tap (2), Sonnet 43 Bourbon Milk Stout (3).

That’s a pretty
impressive haul.

That left just a few
more competition days until the winner could be announced. Join me next week
for the climax, results and some analysis.

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.